Exercise and Eating

Short answer: yes. Your body needs nourishment after being shocked by vigorous exercise. If you're doing just cardio, you don't need to eat as much as you would need to eat after strength training, but you still need to hydrate and replace some of the things your body loses by consuming some electrolytes. My girlfriend has a tough time eating after cardio, so she drinks a lot of water when she gets home, takes a shower, and by the time she's out, she's ready to eat. If you're lifting any weight whatsoever, you definitely need to eat some protein and simple carbs after exercising, or your hard work will go to waste. A glass of chocolate milk is a great post workout snack.

A good thing to do is to time all of your meals and eat and exercise according to what time you are supposed to eat. For example, I'll eat lunch at noon and my next planned meal won't be until 3pm, so I'll wait an hour to digest a little, exercise from 1:00-2:30 and I'll be back to eat by 3.

It depends on when I workout and what I do as to whether or not I want to eat afterwards. If I do water aerobics I'm famished and ready to eat my arm off. If I do a lot of cardio (bike/treadmill) then I usually wait an hour or so to eat but down lots of water. It think it's a personal thing. I wouldn't force yourself to eat.